What is a Virtual Classroom?

A virtual classroom is a digital replica of a traditional classroom or training room. The instructors teach, and the participants learn in real-time, face-to-face but via internet-enabled technology devices. The classroom or the meeting room staple – whiteboard – remains intact. Brainstorming, ideation, and discussions happen in real-time. Tests are given and taken pre and post the session. The reports are ready right after the session is over.

Everything remains the way it is. The only difference is: an online classroom uses technology to support instruction and learning. The benefit? It offers more flexibility over a traditional classroom. You can deliver the instruction to a geographically dispersed audience at one time. Both the instructors and learners have rich experience of collaborating with other learners and instructors from around the world. The attendance is automatically tracked. Moreover, an online classroom typically incorporates more communication tools, such as chat, open discussion boards, polls, multimedia content and social media.

Technically, a virtual classroom is an online learning environment in which distance education is delivered face-to-face via the internet on technology devices. Whereas, virtual classroom software is a technology tool, platform or medium that facilitates the delivery and consumption of your eLearning content within a virtual learning environment.

The online class software works in a similar fashion for businesses. You can train employees, vendors, partners, and customers face-to-face in real-time via a standalone app or you can also integrate it with your website, CMS, ERP or LMS. You can conduct the training even when the stakeholders are on the move. They can access the eLearning material and attend the live session from their smartphones, tablets or laptops.

Who uses virtual classroom software?

The virtual classroom software can be used for all kinds of sessions – educational, collaborative, training-related, or promotional. The most common uses include:

Online teaching and tutoring: Anyone from an individual instructor, a school teacher, a college professor to schools, tutoring and test prep institutes, colleges, and universities can use it to deliver virtual online classes for formal curriculum-based learning, homework help, revision classes or specialized coaching for competitive exams.

Employee and partner training: With the virtual training software, companies can deliver face-to-face learning to a remotely-located workforce, partners, associates, suppliers and subsidiaries from one central location.

Server-side recording

The automated server-side recording (SSR) works in the background when a class is streaming live. The recording is captured directly on our server, which means it doesn’t consume your device computing resources. As no upload happens from your and your attendees’ devices, delivering and attending classes on devices with low-end CPUs is possible. The recording is available in your Library in MP4 format within minutes of the end of your session. Because the live session is captured on our servers, internet speed of attendees does not impact the recording quality. Multi-bitrate (MBR) streaming adapts live streaming to an attendee’s internet bandwidth and CPU capacity – hence very little buffering even on low-end connections. While SD (640p) recording is a default feature, HD (720p) and full-HD (1080p) video recording capabilities are available in the Enterprise plan.

Advanced interactive whiteboard

The interactive online whiteboard comes with a full-screen mode, creating a bigger workspace. You can open multiple whiteboards to draw, illustrate, show diagrams, upload presentations, images or even play videos from your library without any hassles. The out-of-the-box advanced geometric shapes and graphs make it easy to teach math and statistics. Circuit diagrams, line diagrams, and apparatus shapes have been included for teaching physics, electrical sciences, and chemistry in a hassle-free manner in an online classroom. The inclusion of maps helps a great deal when teaching geography. You can annotate to explain, illustrate and comment on an existing file or image. You also get the option to choose different colors from the color palette.

Advanced collaboration and moderation

Create advanced collaboration opportunities through transferable writing and audio-video controls. The automatic speaker recognition indicates the person speaking or writing in the attendee space. Live text chats allow for real-time, peer-to-peer or peer-to-instructor collaboration without disturbing the ongoing session. While you still control their actions, regular involvement of the attendees leads to higher satisfaction. Perfect for businesses, it helps make virtual training of distributed groups easy and quick, keeping all communication at one place.

Live screen and application sharing

Share your device screen with your audience in the whiteboard interface and let them see your actions in real-time. Application sharing makes it possible to share just one application like PPT or Excel open in your laptop. It helps you keep virtual classroom interface distraction-free and keep everyone on the same page. You can also offer remote assistance to the attendees by asking them to share their desktop screen. Live screen sharing is helpful in group collaboration, online demos, and remote support.

Live polling

Use live polling feature to break the class monotony and improve interaction and engagement. Start your session with icebreaker questions and build a rapport with your audience. You can also use the polling feature to evaluate their understanding before the session or give scenario-based questions to test their progress and increase engagement. It is also an easy way to get instant feedback about the content, speed of the class, or technical issues they’re facing. You can conduct surveys to determine their personalities, interests, opinions and values and optimize your content and teaching style based on the insights.

Integrated library

Upload, organize and store your content in the cloud and access it from anywhere at anytime. The integrated library supports all types of files, saving the hassle of transferring and carrying data. Upload text, audio, video, PPT, and HTML files in different formats (PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, WAV, WMA, MP3, MOV, AVG, MPEG, WMV, MP4, JPEG, GIF, PNG). The virtual storage saves the hassle of transferring and carrying data. It’s easy to search for content and share it with your audience. Also, once a content resource is uploaded to the library, you can reuse it for different classes.

Collaborative code editor

Collaborate while coding in real-time with the built-in code editor. The shared integrated development environment (IDE) makes it possible for remotely located students to learn to code online or technical teams to work together on code. Syntax Checker helps find the wrong or incomplete code. When you take the cursor over it, syntax highlighting reveals the errors and offers suitable suggestions. Also, it’s a great way to gauge the progress of an application or a project for geographically dispersed programming professionals working in the same team.

Test and assessment

Create and manage time-bound exams with the built-in test maker. You can conduct pre and post class tests to understand a learner’s journey and the knowledge they have acquired during the class. Alongside, insights into student progress help you understand the effectiveness of teaching modalities and take corrective actions. The test-maker supports different question types – true/false, MCQs in various formats – standard, multi-select and matrix table. You can repurpose tests for another session for a different set of the audience if required.

Easy administration

Automate everyday mundane admin tasks and put yourself in a better place. You can schedule live sessions, send customized invitations to attendees, define attendee roles and permissions and extend the class time from one place. Access reports, measure performances and track attendees with a single click. Do away with juggling the Excels, formatting, record keeping and keep everything centrally controlled.

Insights and analytics

Access reports on learner attendance, login-logout times and session duration to track and analyze learner performance. Aggregate data, compare and correlate to derive information and conclusions. Make data-driven decisions to improve teacher and content performances and learning outcomes.

API and Plugins

Use WizIQ Virtual Classroom API to integrate live class functionality to your website. Use WizIQ Virtual Classroom plugins enable you to start delivering live classes from your LMS/CMS, such as Moodle, WordPress, Canvas, Blackboard, Joomla! Drupal, Sakai, eFront, Totara, Edmodo. Allow your users to log in with a single ID and password to access your system as well as attend live sessions from the integrated class software. The single sign-on (SSO) facility allows users to access the connected applications without separate registrations. Benefit? No confusion and reduced password fatigue.

What our customers have to say about WizIQ

WizIQ’s multilingual interface allows me to teach women who only speak Russian and can only read the Cyrillic Alphabet. WizIQ is specifically created with user-ease in mind. Even the technologically challenged can run classes on WizIQ. My students can attend classes by simply clicking on a link! WizIQ works on any browser and with any device.

– Alla Folsom Online Trainer and Owner of Budu-koroleva.ru

Our students love WizIQ because it allows them the opportunity to interact with other students in real time. Students post questions using the chat feature, and other students or the instructor answers them, resulting in a great collaboration session. I especially like the ease of use and the ability to use WizIQ on an iPad. The price also really makes it something to love.

The history of virtual learning environment goes back to as early as the 1700s when lessons were sent weekly to the interested audiences by mail in the US. The correspondence used to be in writing. It was the University of Wisconsin – Madison that first used the term “distance education” in 1892. Later, the University of Houston offered its first college course in 1953 on public television in the United States. The live telecasts aired for 13-15 hours each week at night so that working students could watch the classes.

In 1969, the US Department of Defense commissioned ARPANET – a packet switching network to implement TCP/IP (the foundation technologies of the internet). In 1970, the Havering Computer Managed Learning System was developed in London, and over 100 teachers and 10,000 students were using it by 1980. In 1984, the faculty and students at the University of Waterloo developed applications together by using networked IBM PCs. A year later in 1985, Nova Southern University’s Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences awarded accredited graduate degrees through online courses. In the mid-nineties, when the idea of personal computers was still in infancy, distance learning seemed to cross the boundaries of traditional education. Students relied on discussion boards, chats, and digital documents for learning.

It was only when the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University offered two-year accelerated bachelor degree programs, the US-based institutes saw a huge influx of international students in their virtual courses. And it was in the 2000s when online education industry started growing leaps and bounds with the advent of personal electronic devices. The industry saw an unprecedented growth in the increased use of smart mobile devices. It was projected to have hit $107 billion in 2015.

There are two options available when it comes to virtual classroom setup and deployment:

On-premise: On-premise virtual classroom software is the one installed and running on the premises of the organization using it. This may or may not be licensed software but is considered more secure than those which are publicly hosted. You have the flexibility to create your functionality and customize the platform according to your need. However, you trade ease-of-use for customizability. Also, it calls for a massive investment of resources and time. You’ll also need a full-fledged IT infrastructure and support to make this arrangement work.

Cloud-based: This is an off-premise option, known as SaaS – Software as a Service. It is hosted in the cloud, and you practically don’t need anything on-site other than a basic computing device and an internet connection. The customizations can be done only by your service provider. With the cloud-based option, you can go live within minutes after you purchase your subscription. It works like any rented service and can be started, stopped and scaled at any time. That’s how WizIQ works.

Open-source SaaS platform: If you choose to go with SaaS online classroom software, you’ll have to choose between the open-source and subscription-based software. You can download and install open-source software for free. However, you might need to struggle with customizations and deployment. You’ll either have to rely on the community of developers or hire an IT expert for support.

Paid SaaS platform: As the name itself suggests, it’s a paid service. The plus side is everything right from the product to customization, maintenance and support are made available to you. You get the time and resources to focus on your core business function; your service provider takes care of the rest. The support is typically available 24/7. WizIQ virtual class software works on this model.

Four ways an online classroom gives you an edge over a traditional classroom

TraditionalClassroom

Virtual Classroom

Teaching limited to and within the classroom.

Teaching from anywhere is possible with online classroom software.

Teachers have to follow the same process for every student batch. More work hours are spent on repetitive tasks.

You can automate a major part of the process. Also, the students can go over the class recordings to reinforce classroom learnings.

The use of learning technologies is limited in the traditional classroom.

There’s no limit on the number of technologies and the way they can be used in an online classroom.

The costs incurred on infrastructure, travel and learning material are high.

The costs of infrastructure, travel and learning materials come down to a minimum.